Airport hell

The latest piece of ridiculousness that I encountered is an age-old problem, but nothing brings home the inanity of a situation like experiencing it first-hand. A friend of mine, flying down to Cape Town for her cousin`s wedding over the long weekend, tasked me with ferrying her to the airport at around 10am on Friday.

On Thursday evening, I received a frantic phone call from my friend to tell me that she had misplaced her ticket. She didn`t know how it could have happened. She has a drawer in which she keeps such things. Everything else (ID, passport) that should have been in the drawer was, but the ticket, which she had purchased four months previously, was nowhere to be seen.

I drove over to her place. We went through every piece of paper in the house. An hour-and-a-half later, we were forced to admit that the unthinkable had happened. Her ticket was gone.

The next step was phoning the SAA booking line to find out how the ticket could be reissued. The naivet'e with which we approached this task has me, now older and wiser, chuckling at our blind faith that everything could be easily resolved.

Now, I`ve definitely heard that one of the big no-no`s of travelling is Do Not Lose Your Ticket Under Any Circumstances. I always thought (na"ive, na"ive me) that this is because it is ludicrously difficult to get a reissue, and that if you only realise on the morning of the flight that it has vanished, you might not have enough time to go through all that bureaucracy.

So we called SAA. They were very sweet and helpful, but would not budge on their policy of not reissuing lost tickets. Under Any Circumstances. They recited, in cheery automaton tones, the terms and conditions around lost tickets. A lost ticket cannot be refunded immediately, but if after six months, it hasn`t been used, the money will be reimbursed then.

She couldn`t guarantee that the capricious mood of the person on duty the next morning would be in our favour, but she was pretty sure my friend would get her ticket.

Georgina Guedes, Editor, ITWeb Brainstorm

My friend pointed out that she needed to fly down to Cape Town that weekend for her cousin`s wedding. She was informed, blandly, that she would have to purchase a new ticket.

Her credit card having recently borne the burden of a wedding gift, fabulous new outfit and matching shoes, wasn`t really in any position to provide the funds for the purchase of a new ticket.

She asked if she could cancel the ticket, get a refund and purchase a new ticket in that way. Surprisingly, she could, but the problem there would be that her flight was fully booked, and that she would drop to the bottom of the waiting list.

However, we learnt that there were tickets available on an earlier flight. She decided to go with that option, but when she instructed the agent to go ahead with the process, she was told that her ticket, which had been bought so far in advance at a special rate, was not refundable.

Feeling ill, she hung up the phone.

We sat together and prioritised the facts. She had to go to her cousin`s wedding (she`d bought a fabulous new dress). She couldn`t cancel her ticket. She couldn`t get a refund. All that was left to do was to find the money to purchase a whole new ticket. We budgeted frantically, I offered to lend her money; somehow we scraped the funds together. She called SAA back.

She explained her situation to the new agent. The new agent listened sympathetically, and then suggested that we go to a police station, report the ticket stolen, get a case number, and bring it to the ticket office where the ticket could be reissued at a cost of R250.

She couldn`t guarantee that the capricious mood of the person on duty the next morning would be in our favour, but she was pretty sure my friend would get her ticket.

To cut a long story short (too late) we did what she said, arrived super early at the airport, reported the ticket stolen at the airport police station, and got the ticket reissued.

At the time we were filled with sickly gratitude, but as the days have worn on, I have started to feel vaguely bitter about the whole situation. If it is possible to replace a stolen ticket, why isn`t it possible to replace a lost one?

And what about that six-month waiting period for a refund? What kind of insanity is that? What person in their right mind might use a ticket within six months, rather than on the actual day? And why do the systems protect that person`s right to do this, rather than my poor friend`s right to travel on a flight she has booked and paid for?

This is particularly asinine in light of the fact that it is now possible to check in without any ticket at all, using only an ID document.

Even though everything worked out in the end, and my friend was only R250 out of pocket, I can`t believe that there isn`t a more efficient, client-friendly way of managing the process.